Heartbeat
by Stealth Dragon
Summary: “There are some things you can't hallucinate.”


**Heartbeat**

By

Stealth Dragon

Rating – T

Disclaimer – I do not own Stargate Atlantis or it's characters or a remote control that works right.

Synopsis – "There are some things you can't hallucinate." Shep/Weir friendship, not _a_ ship. I mean if you want to see it as more, you can, but I'd prefer it to be considered a friendship piece. Elizabeth angst, John whump, woo-hoo!

A/N: This story was inspired by hugging – yes, hugging. Actually a comic book in which the bad guy embraces the good-guy to prove to the good-guy that she is not a super zombie but actually a living being – which the good-guy cannot kill. It was the concept of _why_ the bad-guy was hugging the good-guy that intrigued me.

SGA

The Pegasus Galaxy had made Elizabeth Weir a paranoid.

The gate activated on time. Sheppard's team stepped through the event horizon on time. All four members were upright, blood free, chatting amiably, and Sheppard was even smiling. Elizabeth stood in the control room watching them cross the gateroom floor to the stairs. John looked up to cast his perpetual smile on her. Elizabeth flashed a smile back as she continued to wait for the ax to fall. Smiles were no longer as reassuring as they used to be, and that's how she knew she was becoming a paranoid.

Elizabeth pulled away from the window to meet the team leader at the top of the stairs. Her smile was genuine and her body purposefully relaxed, making a part of her sulky over the lack of a reason for feeling uneasy. It was no longer a matter of gut instinct and intuition; her body simply refused to relent its state of readiness until there was absolute, undeniable proof of everything being a-okay with the world.

Definitely paranoid.

"I take it everything went well?" Elizabeth said.

John didn't reply, probably seeing his smirk as enough of a reply not to have to say anything. McKay ended up being the one to verbally answer, and his smile was even bigger than John's.

"Elizabeth that lab is... _amazing_. I mean a close second to Atlantis amazing. Everything is intact, half of everything is working, and half of everything else _will_ work as soon as you okay the use for one of the generators to power it all up. The two days we were there I managed to get two hard drives worth of information. Granted it all needs to be translated..."

Elizabeth held up her hand to forestall further reports. "Okay, Rodney. Tell me at the briefing," Elizabeth said in good humored exasperation. "First, post mission check, clean up, and get some real food into you. Briefing will be in two hours."

Two hours later found everyone gathered in the meeting room. Rodney was given free rein to happily rant about the technological wonders of the lab on MX-2475. Experiment after experiment, device after advice – it was a virtual toy store of advanced goodies that actually had Rodney drooling, honest to goodness drooling. He was talking so fast spittle had glossed one corner of his mouth.

Everyone had their two-cents to throw in. Teyla was confident by the lack of wraith presence. Ronon was confident by the lack of signs that the wraith had ever been there. John was still all smiles, and it was starting to bug Elizabeth. He had yet to say two words, and responses were limited to nods or head shakes. Rodney even jibed him by calling him an ATA gene grease monkey, and John just shrugged as though it couldn't be helped.

Elizabeth's grandmother had always said that you should never trust a person who smiles too much. People weren't normally so damn happy twenty-four hours a day unless there was something seriously wrong with them.

Elizabeth had assumed her grandmother was just being paranoid.

"People aren't born paranoid, honey," her grandmother had said by way of a response to the roll of her granddaughter's eyes. "You might say it's something involuntarily earned, one way or another. What you call paranoia, I call caution. I don't base my life around the caution, I just listen to it."

Elizabeth suspected paranoia was when caution talked too much, making it hard to know when to listen and when not to.

Caution was hissing at her even now.

_He's smiling too much._

When the briefing was over, everyone stood to leave. Elizabeth hurried over to stop John before he had a chance to slip away. She reached out, closing her fingers over his wrist. He still had his jacket on and the material felt cool beneath her fingers, the arm beneath solid. Too solid, without the feel of skin sliding over bone or the press of tendons against her palm. Gripping his wrist was more like gripping a lifeless pipe, and she wondered if her hands had gone partially numb so not feeling things as they should.

Paranoia screamed at her that something was wrong.

She released John's arm when he turned to look at her. At least his smile was a little less glaring. More the small, amiable smile of being polite.

Elizabeth smiled back. It was a forced smile, she was aware, and she berated herself for it.

"Hey," she said when her brain couldn't dig up an excuse for stopping John fast enough.

"Hey," he said back.

"So," she said, still stalling for time. She finally decided just to spit it out. "How've you been?" Okay, not what she had meant to say, but 'are you all right' would have been giving the paranoia what it wanted.

John's smile took up most of his face. "Great. You?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "Not bad."

John nodded, and they fell into a moment of stretched out, uncomfortable silence.

"Well," John said, "gotta go." He gave her a light pat on the shoulder that made her flinch. Even with his hand gone, and John gone heading down the hall, the touch lingered, making Elizabeth's flesh crawl.

_Something's wrong, why don't you see it?_

She didn't see it, she just felt it. In fact, no one saw it until four days later during the team's next mission. The stargate activated before schedule, and John's team rushed through carrying John between them.

"He got hit by a stunner and I couldn't find a pulse!" Rodney screamed. As soon as they were through, they had John on the floor for Rodney to perform CPR. Beckett and his med team arrived seconds after. They transferred John to the gurney, and Beckett straddled the Colonel's waist to continue chest compressions as a nurse squeezed air from a bag into John's lungs.

The ritual waiting and pacing commenced once Beckett, John, and med team vanished behind the infirmary door.

Twenty minutes later (sooner than usual, Elizabeth realized) Beckett emerged bearing news no one had ever expected to hear.

Beckett's face was starch white when he announced, "The bugger's not bloody human!"

Elizabeth's paranoia crowed in triumph. Her jaw dropped, and through the white-noise of her shock she heard words such as Asurans, nanites, and for everyone to have their blood tested.

It wasn't until the next day that Beckett had finally been able to composite his findings in neat, sane order. Beckett's own shock, however, was never-ending.

"I've never seen anything like it," he said at their emergency meeting. "The body is basically formless, but capable of taking on any form through the use of holographic imagery."

"And you didn't catch the whole metal body thing during the post-check?" Rodney accused.

Beckett looked both abashed while also annoyed. "No, and I know why. We've all been infected with nanites. They're dead now but I've reason to suspect that since the little buggers didn't kill those without the gene, they were used to perpetuate the illusion. I'd put Sheppard's blood sample in the fridge after the post check, but when I searched for it, all I found was an empty vial. But I recall, clear as day, drawing blood from the Colonel the day you lot got back from that lab."

Ronon's eyebrows lifted. "Wow. That's one good illusion."

Beckett sighed. His face refused to take on a more healthy color. "Aye, but what's got me buggered is how these nanites affected us all equally, gene and no-gene alike."

"What about John?" Elizabeth asked. They could deal with the nightmare ramifications to all this when John was back with them to share in the mutual horror. "Could he still be on the planet?"

"It's worth checking out," Ronon said.

"Aye, but decked out in Haz-Mat gear only."

Major Lorne volunteered his team to go. Teyla, Ronon and even McKay (though reluctantly) insisted on coming. Beckett as well to determine if the John Sheppard they found was really John Sheppard.

They were ready within the hour and stepping through the gate. Elizabeth remained at her usual post during this mission-gone-wrong moments at the control room on the other side of the dialing console.

An hour and a half later, the event horizon burst to life. Haz-Mat obscured bodies stepped through, two carrying a stretcher with an alert but groggy Colonel Sheppard.

"I said I could walk," he said in pure annoyance.

Better than the Sheppard annoyance was the lack of a pointless smile. Elizabeth breathed out a sigh of relief. Probably premature, but she was willing to take what she could get even if it was in small increments.

Twenty minutes later, Beckett emerged with the prognosis that the Sheppard they found was indeed Sheppard.

"Food, water, and rest and he'll be his old self in no time," Beckett said, beaming.

Paranoia wasn't convinced. _What about the nanites?_

"What about the nanites?" Elizabeth echoed out loud.

"Well," Carson said, "since we were geared up, no new nanites could invade, and the old ones died when their host did - I think it's safe to say we've no need to worry about them."

Elizabeth sighed out another breath of relief. Paranoia nagged and prodded, trying to find a flaw in the situation. When none was found, it slunk off into the quieter recesses of Elizabeth's mind. It was subdued, but it was still there.

John was released the next day. A day after that, paranoia slipped its oily way back in. They had another briefing, and John told his story in clipped, impatient tones as though anxious to be out of that room.

"It knocked me out, locked me up in some hidden room, and did that whole mind-probe thing to get to know me better. Then you guys showed up and the rest is history." _So can I go now? _The last part he didn't say out loud, but his eyes were certainly screaming it. It was as though Sheppard couldn't stand being around them. His gaze darted up to meet Elizabeth's, and a chill ripped through her body. Sheppard's eyes practically sparked with disdain and impatience. Paranoia chuckled coldly.

_I'm baa-aack._

Elizabeth refused to give into paranoia. Four days drifted by, and she found herself longing for the creepy, plastered smile. John never smiled, not once, whenever they passed in the hall or he dropped by to give an oral report on the going's on of his men.

"He does not peak," Teyla had said one day when she joined Elizabeth for lunch. "Not when we spar, and not when we join him for meals."

"His fighting skills have improved," Ronon said. "He actually beat me a couple of times." Normally it was hard to read the Satedan, but Elizabeth was pretty sure she heard more of an uncertain tone than an impressed tone from the big man.

Rodney didn't say much, which said plenty in and of itself. His constant agitation that escalated whenever John was around said a hell of a lot more. The final straw was when Elizabeth, heading to her quarters, found John backing Rodney into a corner as the Colonel ranted about being too busy to light up some damn Ancient junk. Rodney was pale, gaping, and trying to shrink against the wall.

"John!" Elizabeth barked. When John's molten gaze landed on her, Rodney took that opportunity to take off.

"What!" John snarled.

Elizabeth stalked up to him. "What the hell is wrong with you? You've been biting people's heads off left and right since you got back. I know what you went through was hard but this is just ridiculous. It's not like you. You need to talk to someone, John. You can't keep doing this."

"I'm fine," John said with harsh finality, and turned abruptly to leave. Elizabeth reached out and grabbed his arm. She jolted at the feel – the cool material of his shirt, the solidity that was like holding a pipe rather than human flesh, muscle, and bone. John twisted around, jerking his arm free to grab her wrist. His grip was vice tight to have the bones grating together, and his hand was like ice.

"John!" Elizabeth yelped. She tried to twist her wrist free, which only made the pain worse. "John, let go of me..."

"Just leave me alone," John growled. He squeezed tighter and tighter toward the breaking point. Elizabeth pressed her hand into his chest to push him away. Lorne, Ronon, and Rodney's arrival was a last minute save before the bones of her wrist finally snapped. It took all three of them to haul John back, then the arrival of three marines to drag him kicking and screaming to the infirmary.

Elizabeth stood there, trembling, blinking back tears. It was odd the thoughts that popped into the mind in moments of shock. There was no asking why John had done this, no arguing that John wasn't supposed to hurt her, or shouting to the heavens what the hell was going on.

The thought that popped into her head was that she hadn't felt John's heart beat. A fury like his should have had it chugging like a runaway train. But nothing had tapped against her palm when she'd pressed it to John's chest. No ribs had dug into the heel of her hand on each heaved breath. She wasn't even sure that John's chest had moved.

An hour later, Beckett announced that John was dead, and once again not human.

Just another Tinman.

"What!" Rodney squeaked.

Elizabeth's heart seemed to falter. "But... The nanites, you said they were dead. You were in Haz-Mat gear."

Rodney snapped his fingers and his face lighted up into that wide-eyed expression of epiphany. "Maybe they weren't dead. Maybe they were dormant." He didn't stick around to elucidate. He was off to his lab, calling Zelenka along the way.

It didn't take them long to prove Rodney's theory to be correct. The nanites weren't dead, just sleeping. With the nanites being dormant there was no harm in them messing with everyone's system when an EMP pulse was emitted. Rodney and Zelenka had everyone gather around the source of the pulse and let the thing rip. Their next test confirmed the nanites not only dead but being flushed from the system.

"They may be good with screwing with our minds but the Asuran's little mechanical germs packed more of a punch," Rodney explained at the briefing afterwards. "I don't think fake John one and fake John two are Asurans. Well, at least not the Asurans we've come to know and hate. Maybe another model that didn't pan out?"

"And John?" Again, they could speculate later.

A second search turned up nothing. But they still went back, again and again, day after day until five days later when the gate activated.

"Incoming wormhole!"

Elizabeth burst from her office just as the event horizon congealed.

"Receiving an IDC," the tech said. "It's... Colonel Sheppard's."

Paranoia ranted and raved until it got its way. Elizabeth stiffened. "Get men down here geared up in Haz-Mat suits. And get Sheppard on the line."

As marines in red rubber suits trickled in, Elizabeth had a nice little chat with John, and heard an interesting story she immediately refused to buy.

"They moved me to another world so you couldn't find me," he explained.

When the men were gathered, Elizabeth had the shield lowered. John stepped through disheveled, dirty, and smiling in relief until he saw the guns trained on him.

"I take it it hasn't been a good couple of days," he said.

It sounded enough like John, but Paranoia had gotten it's foot in the door and wouldn't leave. "Take him to quarantine. We'll let Beckett look him over."

A bewildered John was hustled off to the isolation unit of the infirmary, and everyone not in Haz-Mat gear cleared a path. The team searching for John returned twenty minutes later after Elizabeth relayed the news of the may-or-may not be prodigal son's return. Carson remained in Haz-Mat gear as he went into isolation – followed by two marines – to asses John's humanity.

The prognosis – Beckett was never given the chance when John attacked only to be gunned downed, leaking clear fluids rather than red blood. Elizabeth felt as though someone had rammed a knife into her chest when Beckett stepped out of the infirmary and made the announcement.

"We'll keep looking for him, lass," Beckett assured. His hair was plastered to his head from sweat, and clear fluids that had splattered onto his face dripped from his chin.

"No," Rodney muttered from his spot on the floor where he hunched in defeat. "You'll find something that _looks_ like him, over and over."

"Rodney!" Carson snapped.

Elizabeth folded one arm across her chest. With the other hand she covered her mouth. Pooling tears stung her eyes until finally spilling down her cheeks. Except she didn't sob, she chuckled hysterically.

"But he's right, Carson... He's right."

_ssssssssssssssssssssssss_

Two weeks since first meeting the fake John, and the real John couldn't be found. Nothing was said out loud but the speculative whispers were saying plenty.

No way could John be alive. Why would these shape-shifting Asurans keep him alive?

Each time the team went back to the lab they encountered another non-human John, then another and another. Each one told a story about being kept in a hidden prison. Then Carson would do a simple blood test, and the moment the needle snapped on fake skin, the marines would open fire.

Two weeks of this was turning it into a habit. Lorne confessed to the difficulty of not shooting first and assessing after. These mask-wearing Asurans were persistent. Stupidly persistent, according to Rodney. They just kept coming and coming...

Then, as two weeks crept into being three, they were gone. The next search turned up no more mask-wearers. Neither did it turn up a warm human body. Paranoia was beginning to silence as resignation stepped up to take over. There was going to come a point that if they didn't find Sheppard then Elizabeth would need to start formulating a eulogy. Elizabeth could not deny the whispers. The non-Asuran creatures would have kept John alive for information; she was certain of that since it explained why each fake John the team encountered was more like Sheppard than the last fake John. Now that these creatures had stopped trying so they could vanish, there was no one around to keep John alive.

And that was only if they hadn't kept him alive just long enough to take what they needed from him to perfect the rest of the facade on their own.

Elizabeth refused to give up hope. Reality, in it's cruelty, was whittling that hope away.

Then, on day five of the third week, the stargate activated two hours before the team's four hour search was up. Elizabeth was at her spot with one arm around her stomach and her other hand at her mouth so she could nibble on a nail. Hope was being tentative about rearing it's head. Paranoia, however, was at the ready to force skepticism on her. The team emerged one rubber clad body at a time.

Three emerged, then two carrying a stretcher between them. The body on that stretcher was a lump beneath the green military issue blanket.

Beckett removed his helmet as he led the way across the floor to the stairs. He glanced up long enough to give Elizabeth a tiny nod, then focused on getting the burden on the stretcher to the infirmary.

Elizabeth followed after everyone else stepped through the 'gate and the event horizon shut down. Rodney joined her, pulling his helmet off his sweat-slicked head.

"We have him," he stated, no-nonsense.

Elizabeth gave him an incredulous glance. "You're sure this time?"

"Oh yeah. He wasn't in a secret room in the lab. He was in a room beneath the lab. Ronon found the entrance about a couple of yards from the lab itself. He'd found tracks when he wandered off outside. We didn't find them before since we kept our search to the lab only, but Ronon thought it would be a good idea to see where the rest of the robo-Sheppards took off to. He found the entrance in a hill behind some vines, went to take a look, and found Sheppard in a cell without food, water, or light. Beckett did his pricking thing and drew blood. We tested it and found no nanites."

"What did John say?" Elizabeth said, wondering what the story would be this time.

"Other than begging Ronon to leave him alone? Nothing. Well, he did kind of whimper Carson's name. Then he started giggling psychotically and rocking back and forth. If the pretense is being kept up, then these Wanna-be Asurans are really pulling all the stops." Rodney paused to swallow. Elizabeth noticed for the first time how pale he was.

"He looks like hell, and that's a universe-sized understatement."

They were forced to wait outside the infirmary (there had never been a time when they weren't forced, but that had yet to stop them from hurrying). Rodney took the time to shed the rubber suit and rush to the mess for a water bottle and muffin. If it had been anyone but Rodney, Elizabeth would have been annoyed by the act. Trapped for hours in a sweltering rubber suit, Elizabeth was amazed Rodney hadn't dropped from dehydration.

Rodney returned, an hour went by, and Carson finally emerged.

"It's definitely him," Carson said. Everyone present seemed to shrink as the burden of nervous anticipation seeped away.

"Can we see him?" Elizabeth said.

Carson nodded. "You can, lass, since you weren't present when we found him. The rest of you lot get cleaned up and get back here for the post check."

No one argued or even whined. They were too tired.

Carson led Elizabeth through the infirmary to the back where the isolation unit had been set up. It was a plain, metallic, square room with an observation window and a bed in the middle.

The room was dim, lighted only enough to see shapes and a few of their details. The bed was empty, the sheets twisted and rumpled at the end, and the I.V. needle still swinging from the bag on the pole, dripping fluids into a tiny puddle on the floor. Elizabeth could see John huddled in the corner with his face turned away. They'd cleaned him up enough to dress him in scrubs that looked three sizes too big for his body. John was a stick figure, a skeleton still retaining his skin. He was so thin it seemed a miracle that he'd managed to move from the bed to the corner. A lump expanded in Elizabeth's throat.

"Oh bloody hell," Carson muttered. He tugged the Haz-Mat mask back over his head before entering the isolation unit. The lights were nudged up enough for Carson to have a better look at his patient. John flinched, lifting his thin, colorless face dark with thick stubble and squinting against the increased brightness. The dusky light seemed to pain him from the way his face twisted. Two weeks worth of light deprivation would do that.

Carson move deliberately toward John. John tried to pack himself deeper into his little corner. He was shaking, and began rocking. Elizabeth could see his mouth move but couldn't hear what he was saying. She was more fixated on his ribs, spine, and shoulder blades protruding from both his skin and the scrub shirt.

When Carson was three feet from John, he crouched and inched forward with gloved hands held out. Carson said something, then John shook his head no in response. When Carson's fingers brushed John's arm, John started and scurried along the wall to the corner adjacent to the viewing window. Carson dropped his hand in defeat. He stood, moving to the bed, and removed the blanket to toss it in John's direction. Then he left.

John stretched forward enough to grab the blanket and wrap it around his shuddering, emaciated body.

Carson returned to the viewing window and pulled the mask off. "I'm afraid we're going to have to sedate him. He needs the fluids in that I.V."

"How bad off is he?" Elizabeth asked.

"Well, since we found him alive it's redundant to say the Asurans were keeping him alive. He's dehydrated, but more than that he's severely malnourished. So they either weren't feeding him or giving him foods he couldn't eat. They weren't exactly gentle with him either. He's got quite the nasty collection of fading and newer bruises, especially about his arms. Larger ones about the back, ribs and chest. Nothing broken though. Small crack on a floating rib but nothing to fret over."

John began crawling around the room, keeping to the wall with the blanket clinging to his back. Elizabeth wanted to call the look in his bloodshot eyes manic. It was more than just manic, though. Far more. It was desperation, confusion, and (speak of the devil) paranoid suspicion. He ran one hand along the wall until he came to the door where he rose, one hand clutching the blanket around his neck, the other feeling along its seam, then testing the panel that wouldn't work for him since a code was needed to get out. John slapped the panel a few times before moving on.

He flinched in alarm when he finally realized the existence of the window – or more accurately the people standing outside the window – and shied away from it. But he did stop to stare back and forth between Carson and Elizabeth, his gaze lingering longest on Elizabeth.

"There's no telling what the hell was done to his mind," Carson said. He sounded both pissed and lamenting.

John rocked back and forth on his heels for a moment, then approached the window cautiously, touching it with the tips of his fingers. He ran his fingers down the window, glass squeaking and fingertips white, then he slowly backed away.

"I'm surprised he let you look him over," Elizabeth said.

"I think he was too disoriented and frightened to put up much of a fuss." Carson then sighed and hefted the mask under one arm. "You may not want to stick around for this. No telling how he's going to react." He moved away, tapping his com for two other personnel to gear up and aid in settling John.

Elizabeth lingered. John took another stumbling, shivering circuit around the room with one hand on the wall but his gaze constantly shifting back to Elizabeth. When he arrived back to the window he pressed his palm against it. The expression on his face could have torn her heart out.

Utter despair. John was pleading without words, begging for help.

Elizabeth's breath caught and her eyes stung. She backed away, slowly, then turned on her heels and hurried out. When she was beyond sight of the room, she pressed her back to the wall and her hand to her face.

It was him. It had to be him. Something _had_ to give and that had to be him.

Paranoia wouldn't have it.

_They've given in to desperate measures. They've altered everything just to throw you off._

Carson got a blood sample. John is nanite free.

_It's still an illusion. Rodney never wiped out the nanites. They're still in you, all of you. This isn't real, and John isn't really there._

Elizabeth's chin trembled so she pressed her hand harder and squeezed her eyes shut until tears popped from the lids to wet her cheeks.

She heard John scream. First in defiance, then rising into a high-pitched shriek of terror. Elizabeth hiccuped in a sob.

There had to be a way to know for certain.

_ssssssssssssssssssssssssss_

Paranoia reigned on Atlantis.

Carson and his medical personnel continued using the Haz-Mat suits when administering to John, whether it was taking his vitals, bringing him meals, or sedating him just so they could bathe him. No one was allowed to visit him, just see him through the observation window like some animal in a zoo. John never stayed in his bed. The moment the sedatives wore off, he would pull his I.V. free and begin wandering with the blanket around his shoulders, or tuck himself into the corner. Sometimes he ate, and other times he seemed afraid to eat. If he ate then fell asleep on his own accord, it was a guarantee each and every time that he would wake up vomiting it back out. He went into panic attacks every time Carson or one of his team entered. Not that anyone else saw but the screams certainly carried.

Carson admitted, after too many days of this, and too many days of Elizabeth prodding him for the truth, that progress wasn't being made. If anything, John was deteriorating further.

Elizabeth already knew this, she was just tired of all the placating bull Carson spouted just to stem back the panic. John's walks around the room were becoming more erratic and chalked full of constant stumbling. It wasn't the stumbling that sickened Elizabeth, it was when he would come to the window, pressing his hand to it, and stare out in silent return-observation until tears spilled down his face. It soon escalated to him pounding on the glass, over and over, begging over and over in a stretched-thin voice that cracked.

"What did I do what did I do what did I do...?"

It was hard not to respond, yet hard to speak. "Nothing John. You're just sick..."

"Let me out, please. I don't want to be here. What did I do? Why am I sick? Please, I don't want to be here. They keep coming and coming and they won't stop coming..." John's breathing increased. He began backing up, around the bed, all the way to his corner where he would crouch and huddle into a quaking ball of skin and bone protruding even through the blanket. "They won't stop... It won't... You'll die again. Again. And they come... Please let me out, please..."

Day after day until another week had come and gone.

Carson wasn't sure. Rodney wasn't sure. No one was sure. Paranoia had whistled the same tune in all their heads.

_It's still an illusion._

A new week was beginning. John barely walked anymore, just crawled. He wasn't getting the real rest he needed, Carson said, and the food he did manage to keep down was only enough to keep him alive, not build his strength. If anything, it wasn't even keeping him alive, not really. Just slowing the deterioration process.

John was dieing, because paranoia wouldn't shut up.

_ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss_

Elizabeth dreamed of visiting John. She walked up to the window, and saw him in the corner. A pile of bones with no skin, bleached white and still dressed in scrubs. The jaw bone was parted in a silent, eternal scream.

Elizabeth bolted upright gasping for breath. Cold sweat made her shiver, and panic made her heart continue to pound. There was a tangibility to the dream that had her smelling decayed flesh, and that got her heart hammering harder. At the same time, something in her snapped.

She couldn't take this anymore. She didn't care anymore. She preferred the illusion to this hell. And if it was an illusion, then what did it matter if John was confined or not?

Elizabeth threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. She grabbed the first shirt and pants she came across in her drawers, tossed them on, but stuck to her slippers as she hurried from her room into the darkened corridor. She walked quick but quiet to the infirmary, then slowed when she arrived. She slipped past the on duty nurse to the isolation room.

There was no hesitation when she palmed the lock and the door slid open. She stepped inside with the same resolve, until the door slid shut behind her, locking her in.

She didn't know the code. Oddly enough, she didn't care. She didn't care about anything now, except for the lump packed into the far right hand corner.

Elizabeth moved with the slow caution of one approaching a wild animal. "John?"

It was too dark to see a reaction. She moved around the head of the bed, stopping just on the other side in sudden hesitation.

She had not considered how John would react. _That_ she harbored a little bit of caring for.

"John. It's me, Elizabeth."

Still no response. Not even a twitch. Elizabeth smoothed out her wrinkled red shirt nervously.

"And before you ask... No, this isn't a break out. Actually, I've come to apologize, in person. You deserve as much." She cleared her throat. "I'm sorry, John. I'm sorry we didn't see through the facade of those... _things_ soon enough to... To save you from what they put you through. And I'm sorry we let them scare us so badly that we're keeping you locked up just because we don't trust our own sanity."

Elizabeth made a quiet hissing sound that couldn't decide between being a laugh or a sob. "Oh, this is bad," she sighed. "I can't even say we're doing all this for your own good. We're not, actually. We're doing it for our own good, because your SOB doppelganging tormentors messed with our heads and got away with it. But you know what, John? I don't give a damn anymore. If we have to live in a hallucination for the rest of our lives, it can at least be one we all enjoy, right?" This time she did laugh – a tiny, unsettled chuckle.

"I'm going to convince Carson to let you out, all right? We're going to get you the help you really need, and freedom. How does that sound?"

Still no response. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold, and dropped her gaze to the floor. She was afraid, afraid that, maybe, her dream hadn't been that far off and John was finally dead. She was afraid to find out, and in a moment of hysterical terror actually preferred it if John tried to attack her.

_At least I'd know he was alive. _She coughed out a manic laugh.

Then she looked back up, and jolted.

John was standing a foot from her. Even in the soft, barely existent blue glow of the infirmary, Elizabeth could see John's eyes. They were large in his thin face, bright and shimmering. Puppy dog eyes to the tenth level. They were also fixed on her face. The blue blanket slid from his thin shoulders, piling behind him at his heels.

Elizabeth's heart shot into her throat. "J-John?"

Thin fingers lifted touching lightly to the side of Elizabeth's face, her jaw first, then rising to her cheekbone. He seemed fascinated by her, as though seeing something he'd only heard about, and not able to believe it.

Suddenly, he pitched forward. Elizabeth reach out to catch him, her hands pressing into his chest. Except John wasn't falling. His thin arms wrapped themselves around her, pulling her in, pressing her tightly against him with his chin resting on her shoulder. She felt his warmth through his shirt, from his arms, his jaw resting on her shoulder and his throat pressing against it. She felt the give of thin skin sliding over ribs digging into her palms. She felt his breath catching in quiet weeping, and his entire body shuddering.

What made her own breath catch was the feel of his heart tapping against her hand, pounding wild and fast beneath the warm skin. And she knew, right then, without a doubt and the persistent voice of caution trying to argue otherwise, that this man was John Sheppard. They had found him.

Paranoia's job was done, so crept unhappily away back into the darkness, and keeping quiet for once.

Elizabeth slid her arms around John, rubbing along his knobby spine one-handed.

"It's all right, John," she whispered, "Everything's going to be all right."

John sucked in a sharp breath. "You're not dead."

Elizabeth shut her eyes but that didn't hold back the tears. She would ask, one day, what they had done to him. Not now, though.

"That's right, John. I'm not." She hugged him tighter. "I'm as real as you are."

_sssssssssssssssssssssssssssss_

The nurse who brought John breakfast, dressed in a Haz-Mat suit, dropped that breakfast on entering the isolation room. She ran off to fetch Beckett, and he arrived a little later after throwing on his own suit. He rushed into the room, skidding to a stop at the sight before him.

"Oh bloody hell, Elizabeth, what have you done!"

Elizabeth was sitting on the edge of John's bed. John was lying curled on that bed beneath the blanket, asleep. Elizabeth smiled tiredly at Carson.

"It's all right, Carson," she said, placing her hand on John's shoulder. "It's him."

"Elizabeth, we can't be sure. We can't be sure of anything..."

Elizabeth slid from the bed, stalking up to Carson, and grabbing him by the wrist. She pulled him over to John while removing the heavy rubber glove from Carson's hand.

"Elizabeth!" he protested, and yet didn't resist. Some reached their breaking points ready or not, others needed a little push. When the glove was off, Elizabeth flipped the blanket aside and moved Carson's hand to press into John's chest.

"There are some things you can't hallucinate."

Carson's eyes widened. "I always thought it odd I could hear a heartbeat, but never really feel it."

Elizabeth smiled.

John was quickly moved from isolation into the main ward, where everyone could come and be with him, not just see him. John awoke to being surrounded by his friends, and it sent him into a tizzy of emotion that had him laughing hysterically and shedding a torrent of tears. Carson took that as a cue to chase everyone off. John begged them all to stay, even reaching out to them like a child reaching for a departing parent.

Elizabeth was the first one back, taking his hand.

"S-stay..." John pleaded.

"We're not going anywhere, John," Elizabeth said. Everyone nodded in agreement, so Sheppard relaxed.

"Thank you for finding me," he said as he began his descent toward sleep with each heavy blink.

Elizabeth squeezed his warm, soft hand. John's hand. The real John Sheppard.

"You're welcome, John."

The End

A/N: Hope you enjoyed. I already have a sequel for this in mind seeing as how John still has that pesky matter of his shattered sanity to deal with. And would you believe I thought the sequel up first? It was to be another one of those after the torture, hurt/comfort deals, but I didn't write it because I felt it was lacking something. Then I thought up this story, and everything finally fell into place. So keep a weather eye open, the sequel will be coming soon.

Any questions anyone has about these illusion using, fake Johns will probably be answered in the sequel. I didn't get into them too much here as that would have cluttered the story up unnecessarily.


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